4 | JUNE 20 • 2024 
J
N

opinion
It’s Our Responsibility 
to Rescue the Hostages
P

resident Ronald 
Reagan hosted Israeli 
Prime Minister 
Menachem Begin at a White 
House state dinner on Sept. 
9, 1981. The custom at state 
dinners is for both the host 
and the honored guest to offer 
a toast.
In his toast, 
Begin spoke 
about Zionism’s 
goal of taking 
responsibility 
for our own 
security: “For 
us, security is 
not a word; it’s 
not even a concept. It is life 
itself. With our experience, 
surrounded on the northern, 
on the eastern front, still, 
after the peace, after the 
sacrifices we gave, we must be 
so careful. We bear so grave 
a responsibility, not only a 
great one in our generation in 
the wake of the Holocaust, to 
make sure that our children 
and our children’s children 
will first of all live and then 
live freely.”
The Israeli people have 
suffered immense pain since 
the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. 
Besides the massive security 
failure and the horrific loss of 
life, the taking and refusal to 
return the hostages has been 
torturous.
Israeli Prime Minister 
Benjamin Netanyahu has 
made rescuing the hostages 
one of Israel’s main priorities. 
He said, “We will continue 
the war until we achieve all 
of our war aims: To eliminate 

Hamas, return all of our 
hostages and our missing, 
and ensure that there is no 
element in Gaza that threatens 
Israel.”
“I told the dear [hostages’] 
families: ‘Returning our 
hostages is a sacred and 
supreme task and I am 
obligated to it together with 
my colleagues,” the prime 
minister said. “As Maimonides 
says: There is no greater 
precept than redeeming 
captives. We will not relent in 
our efforts until we redeem 
them all, until we return 
them all, the boys and girls, 
the mothers and fathers, the 
young men and women, the 
elderly men and women, the 
male and female soldiers — 
all of them.”
President Joe Biden has 

stated: “All of these hostages 
have been through a terrible 
ordeal, and this is the 
beginning of a long journey 
of healing for them. Jill and 
I are keeping them all in 
our prayers today. From the 
moment Hamas kidnapped 
these people, I, along with my 
team, have worked around the 
clock to secure their release.”
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg 
wrote about the need to 
place the situation in Israel 
and the hostages at the top 
of our concerns: “If you 
don’t have a close family 
member in Israel, it is time 
to start acting like you do. If 
a member of your immediate 
family — a parent, sibling, 
spouse or child — were, God 
forbid, in crisis, in the ICU 
or missing, or fighting for 

his or her life, could you be 
distracted? Would you look 
for or welcome distraction? 
Would you not be drawn to 
any news, any update on their 
well-being? As one person 
online posted, when asked by 
a co-worker, ‘Do you have any 
family in Israel,’ he responded, 
‘Only a few million.’”
“Our genuine pain, anguish, 
grief and worry should 
not just be expressions of 
sympathy and empathy 
for what another is going 
through,” Goldberg asserted. 
“This is our pain, our anguish, 
our fear, and our lives, our 
priorities, our focus and our 
time must reflect it.”

A WAR CRIME
Every day that Palestinians 
hold the hostages is a war 

Rabbi Uri 
Pilichowski
JNS.org

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 6

COURTESY OF THE HOSTAGE AND MISSING FAMILIES FORUM/JNS.ORG

Former captive Shlomi Ziv, rescued by an IDF raid into Gaza on June 8, is reunited with his sister, Revital 
Nasi (left), and cousin Liat Ariel. 

